Savage Chains: Captured (#1) (8 page)

But her stomach boiled with anger and disgust. Just because he’d brought her didn’t mean she’d thank him for it, or even value what had just happened.

On the contrary, something about having been worked up sexually against her will served to strengthen her determination.

“You’ll never break me. You can tear my flesh apart with one of those whips, you can give me a thousand orgasms, but I promise you, I will never submit to you willingly.”

Reyes stared into Angelica’s hard brown eyes. He’d just introduced her to a new world of sensation that would have taken any other human female to her knees. Instead she glared at him.

He knew from his own experience that every man or woman could be broken, given enough time, and he knew that eventually he could make her submit. However, given her spirit, the process would require days, maybe even weeks to accomplish, and he didn’t have that kind of time.

He knew something else as well. He couldn’t do it. What he’d done tonight had been something he’d promised himself he’d never do: force either a human or a vampire to do anything against his or her will.

Yet that’s exactly what he’d done.

Worse still, when he’d sent a light preternatural charge through her breast, giving a hint of the kind of pain he was capable of inflicting, she’d told him something that had sent him reeling.

If he was right, the woman who had hurt her might very well have been Sweet Dove herself. The physical description matched and the terrible truth was that he’d learned from her how to focus his power into a debilitating stream in order to cause pain. How many times had she hurt him in just that way, sometimes to create sexual pleasure, other times to torture him just for her gratification?

Guilt and shame washed through him, and slowly he set about unlocking Angelica’s shackles. When she was free, she rubbed her wrists, then tied up her robe. She moved slowly to sit on the nearby padded table.

Her shoulders were slumped with fatigue, but her eyes still sparked defiantly.

Despite his guilt over trying to break her, he knew by the look in her eye that he’d done the right thing in buying her. If Engles had won the bid, he would have battered her senseless by now, savoring how hard she fought him. But she would have died within a few days because he would have beaten her, broken her bones, cut her to ribbons.

One of only two things was going to happen from this point forward. He would tell her about his mission and either she would agree to help him or the game was over. There was simply no way he could take Angelica in her present state to Engles’s mansion and have anyone believe that he’d brought her under his command, that she was truly his slave.

But would she ever agree to help him after what he’d just put her through?

He removed a soft linen handkerchief from the pocket of his pants and wiped any remaining blood from his lips. He’d almost come at least three times while taking down her life force. She’d tasted as sweet as her blood had smelled and he was satisfied—another reality that filled him with guilt.

He paced slowly, trying to find the right way to tell her the truth and to ask for her help. At this point, however, he’d be stunned if she ever believed another word that came out of his mouth.

Finally, he moved to stand in front of her, then swept an arm to encompass the room. “So none of this really frightens you?”

She glanced around. “Actually, I’m frightened out of my mind, I’m just too worn out to show it. Any chance you can leave me in peace for a while? Let me get some sleep?”

“I wish I could, but there’s something I need to explain to you. I’m not a slaver and you’re not really my slave.”

She held up both hands. “You’re driving me crazy. What does that mean, I’m not your slave? From the time you brought me here, you’ve messed with my mind. You hurt me badly, then did all that shit to me while I was chained against the wall, and now you’re telling me you’re not a slaver?”

“I need you to listen to me. For a long time now, I’ve been working to infiltrate the Starlin Group, the same outfit that abducted you and forced you to walk down that runway. This organization is one of the most powerful sex-slavery rings in our world.

“When I told you to leave the Ocean Club that night, I was trying to warn you that you were being scoped by a Starlin acquisition team, a group trained to hunt all over the world for beautiful but vulnerable women who could be removed from their lives without significant repercussions.”

She blinked. She looked exhausted, which of course she would be. She’d already been through hell before he’d brought her into his home, then he’d added to her misery.

Her shoulders fell a little more. “But you told me you joined this group, that I was your first buy.”

“Both of those things are true, but I didn’t buy you to keep you as a slave.”

“Then what did you buy me for?”

“For one essential reason, to uphold my reputation as a slaver.”

“But you just said you’re not a slaver.”

“No, I’m not.”

She glanced at the chains on the wall, the whips, the knives. “So what is all this? Are you saying you don’t use this room?”

“Never, not until tonight.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re lying. You’re a fucking, lying bastard and you’re messing with me again. How can I believe you? You hurt me just now, or at least you showed me how much you could hurt me if I didn’t do as you said. Then you used your fangs on me. I’m just surprised you didn’t shove your cock between my legs and take the whole thing the rest of the way.”

“I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted nothing more.”

She released a heavy sigh. “So you drew the line at raping me.”

“Yes. I did.”

“You’re disgusting.”

He saw the level of her revulsion and knew he wasn’t explaining things well enough yet. “I bought you to support the role I’m playing as a slaver.”

“What role?”

“I have only one goal here, Angelica, to bring Starlin down. And I still want to. When I succeed in destroying this slavery ring, I’ll be saving tens of thousands of lives, maybe more. These auctions will end forever. That’s how I’ve justified, until this moment, doing to you what I just did. I don’t know how else to say this to you, except that I’m deep undercover and I have a plan. A damn good one.”

“And that’s what you meant when you said I fucked up your plans?”

He nodded. “That’s what I meant. What I did in buying you has put me an inch away from blowing my cover.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?”

“Yes, because it’s the truth, the only one that matters right now.”

“And it’s Starlin who abducted me and all those other women there tonight, parading our bodies and selling us at auction.”

He nodded again. He could see that she was turning all this new information over in her mind, so he waited.

Finally, she met his gaze straight-on. “Let’s say I choose to believe you for now. So tell me about this Starlin Group. I take it they’re a significant player.”

“One of the biggest.”

He gave her numbers, something an accountant would appreciate: The Starlin Group moved twenty thousand human women through its organization every year. Between the prostitution houses they owned in a number of countries worldwide, as well as the auctions they sustained in the vampire world, they generated eighteen billion dollars a year.

Then he added the worst stat of all: without exception the human slaves died, so the inventory had to be replaced at a quick, steady pace.

She stared at him, a deep frown drawing her brows together. “All of them?”

He nodded once, slowly.

“How? Why?”

“In a slave situation, a certain percentage of humans, about fifteen percent, will not live beyond the two-week mark even if they’re treated well. Ultimately, it’s a matter of the will.”

She pressed a fist into her cheek, her eyes pinched. “And after the two-week period?”

“A second transition occurs at six months, but the survival rate drops to fifty percent. Beyond that, only a handful live past two years.”

“Oh, dear God. So my life expectancy, in the best of circumstances, would have only been two years.”

He nodded. “But I also want to stress that in the Starlin Group, the percentages are much worse.”

“Because of the sadistic element.”

“Yes. The torture. Humans just don’t hold up well.”

“Are there other auction houses in your world?”

“A few, but not at this level.”

“And you intend to take this beast down.”

Again, he nodded.

“Are you working alone?”

“Pretty much.”

“But how can one man really bring down an entire organization?”

“It will still take time, but the most critical element is that I need to find out who runs this show. The head guy, the brains behind the operation, must be eliminated first. After that, I’ll use my resources to take every single member of this club down, one by one, until nothing is left.

“Despite my efforts to find him, the man who’s behind Starlin remains one of the biggest secrets in our world. He goes by the code name Scorpion, and to my knowledge only one man has access to him, a man called Engles.”

She frowned slightly, tilting her head. “Do you know, I used to think you had to be involved in black ops missions of some kind. You had that look. I’m beginning to think my first assessment of your character was right. So are you some kind of military man in your world?”

He shook his head. “No, not at all.”

She looked him up and down. “You’re big enough. You look like you could take anyone down, which means the real question on my mind right now is why you’re so intent on breaking up the sex-slavery operations in your world? Why are you so determined to destroy Starlin? Why do you even care?”

She got right to the heart of the matter, he’d give her that, but just how much he should tell her, he wasn’t sure.

On the other hand, he suspected that to hold back now, to not tell her the truth, would be the last straw for her. And because he was so close to really getting inside Starlin, he decided to risk it all. He’d tell her what he’d never told another living soul, vampire or otherwise.

He drew a deep breath and held her gaze steadily. “I was a sex slave once, held by my captor for over a century. I know what it is to endure abduction and sale on the block. Everything you would have suffered as a slave, had another man won the bid and brought you to a room like this, I experienced at the hands of my captor. But worse.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand. “I’m not willing to talk about what happened to me, except that it was bad, as bad as it gets. That I survived is nothing short of miraculous, but every day I promised myself that if I ever escaped, I’d tear this depraved part of our world down, if I had to do it with my own bare hands.”

#

Angelica wondered if she’d ever be able to blink again. She still sat on the table, her hands clasped tightly together, staring at Reyes, and trying with all her might to process so many revelations: his mission, his reason for buying her, and the fact that he’d suffered as a sex slave himself.

She looked away from him, letting this new tsunami of information sweep over her. That feeling of having been tackled hard and slammed to earth struck her again.

She met his gaze once more. “So if I’ve truly understood you and if I can believe you, then you saved my life by buying me at auction.”

“More than you know. Damien Engles, the man I referred to earlier, had made it clear to me before the auction began that he intended to purchase you and that I was not to interfere. But I already knew his reputation. Human slaves don’t live longer than a week in his house. He savors the killing element as part of sexual gratification. The worst kind of monster.”

“And he was intent on having me.”

“Absolutely. He liked your fighting spirit, your defiance.”

Reyes turned suddenly, crossing to a nearby shelf and picking up what looked like a small leather bag. When he returned to her, he pulled out a weird-looking glove, then slipped it on. “I want you to take a good look at this.”

Her gaze moved slowly down to his hand—and what she saw forced all the air from her lungs. Each fingertip held a sharp steel claw. She tried to breathe, but couldn’t. Every part of her body felt frozen, immobile. Nothing she’d been exposed to in this world had truly sunk in, not even his comments about sadism and torture, until she stared down at the leather device. The middle finger had two claws, about a quarter inch apart. “And this group uses this thing?”

“Some do. Engles, most certainly.”

She shook her head, staring at him. He tucked the glove back into the bag and in a quick flick of his wrist tossed it back on the shelf.

She pulled the lapels of her robe tight together once more. Her voice came out on a whisper. “You didn’t just save my life, you saved me from a kind of torture I can’t even begin to imagine. My God.”

For a long moment, she covered her face with both hands. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to get the image of that glove out of her mind. But maybe that was a good thing, given her present circumstances.

She’d thought Reyes an absolute monster when he’d put a hand to her throat, giving her a warning about what he could do to her if he wanted to. But he hadn’t actually hurt her. Of course, he’d definitely caused her pain on the runway, but now she understood why he’d felt compelled to do so: to show he could command his newly bought slave. He was playing his role, supporting his cover.

“Angelica, I need to be honest with you. I hadn’t intended to buy you like I did, especially since my plans depended on Engles having his way. I acted on impulse when I started bidding for you, because I knew that not only would you be tortured, but you’d be dead within a few days and I couldn’t have lived with myself. But dammit, Engles is the key to my mission.” He shook his head several times in a row. “Now, however…”

“This could already be a shitfest for you.”

“To put it succinctly. I bid against the most powerful man in the organization, short of Scorpion himself.”